fate of the furious

The “Furious” franchise has become a financial behemoth, sweeping everything in front of it, including negative reviews and ever more ridiculous story-lines and stunts.

Reviewing the film in any normal manner is almost impossible as the movie has almost become a parody of itself, a snake swallowing it’s own tail if you will.

With Paul Walker arguably the most talented of the group no longer with us, we have cardboard cut out characters, augmented by Jason Statham, Charlize Theron and Kurt Russell joining in the fun.

Plot, well you don’t go to see these movies for Dostoyevsky but some vague outline to get from start to finish is always helpful for an audience.

Alternatively director F. Gary Gray has largely ditched that basic cinematic premise and instead strung together over the top heavily CGI augmented stunts. This coupled with occasional quiet moments discussing “family” hopefully gives the impression something meaningful is happening.

This time there is a split in the “family” which attempts to add some gravitas for Vin Diesel to explore. However the rest of the cast are clearly “in” on the joke, just enjoying silly fun including a bizarre Helen Mirren cameo. Vin Diesel clearly failed to get the memo and attempts to emote and take all this seriously.

Most of the characters have always been and remain somewhat redundant, merely there to add the occasional wisecrack. However, stunts are what the film lives or dies on, these are impressive but so far removed from reality and basic physics. It is obvious most of the time the actors are nowhere near real cars or locations when these “stunts” are created.

Statham has the most fun and acting honours, he genuinely seems to know what’s required. Emulating a John Woo bullet and violence ballet, whilst holding a new born infant, arguably the highlight. Theron takes the post “Fury Road”, pay check and phones in a caricature performance. The “Rock” is just the Rock, you should know this by now.

The film jumps around exotic locations including Cuba, playing like a tourist show reel whilst entirely glossing over reality. Instead, portraying a sun kissed island bathed in beauties with belts for skirts, the franchise never daring to stray too far from the target audience demographic.

As an example of just how bonkers these movies have become. At one point the detached door of a submerged Lamborghini is used to protect a character from machine gun fire from snow mobile riding assailants. Did we forget to mention the nuclear submarine breaking the ice pack underneath, firing a torpedoes the “Rock” redirects with his feet?

We suspect basic naval submariner training fails to cover these practical scenarios.

Summary

Remove brain prior to watching and enjoy this as dumb fun with explosions and ridiculous stunts, the “A” team for a new generation.

There are $1.2 Billion reasons why they keep making these films, just think of them as crowdfunding for the next quiet, mature and more intelligent movie.